The Real World Stories Behind Sailor Moon

Category Archives: Reviews

When I think about likely Sailor Moon cross-overs, I have to say that Sanrio’s My Melody doesn’t even rank into the top 20 of the properties that I would ever imagine seeing any form of synergy with. And yet, here we find ourselves with a new collaboration café featuring these two juggernauts of cute.

Opening to four cities across Japan (Osaka, Sapporo, Tokyo, and Nagoya), this tie up with The Guest cafés features our favorite Sailor Soldiers in Sanrio-inspired designs and offers up a variety of equally adorable dishes.

Thanks to the stars aligning in my favor, I was able to get into the Sailor Moon x My Melody Café on opening day here in Tokyo, so I figured I’d share the experience with all of you here.

You might want to eat a light snack before reading this, otherwise you’re gonna get hungry…!

If you’re anything like me, the moment you heard that there was going to be a real, live Sailor Moon attraction opening up at Universal Studios Japan (USJ), you were probably overcome with excitement. This is very likely the one and only time that we’ll ever be seeing the Sailor Soldiers in a theme park setting, so we’re going to need to make the most out of the experience.

Now that we’re only two months out from the unveiling of Sailor Moon: The Miracle 4-D, it’s about time that we take a look at what USJ has in store!

Whether you love the Sailor Moon games developed by Angel or not, you have to be impressed by the developer’s ability to not only keep publishing games at a rather fast pace, but also the fact that they managed to innovate with each and every game, learning from the lessons of the older games and fixing problems for players. This time we’re taking a look at Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon R for the Nintendo Game Boy.

Following up on the success of the success of the first Super Famicom Sailor Moon game released on August 27, 1993, Angel followed up on its success with yet another side-scrolling beat ’em up just 4 months later, on December 29, 1993,1 this time based on the Sailor Moon R anime. Though its apparent that a lot of material was re-used between the two games in order to cut out on time needed for programming and art design, there’s a surprising amount of new content to the game and the fighting engine has been greatly upgraded, so it really does stand out well on its own. Let’s take a look!

After the amazing success of the Sailor Moon game for the Game Boy, developer Angel went immediately back to the drawing board to make their next game – this time for the then-leading powerhouse, the Super Famicom. Released on August 27, 1993, the game came out while the Sailor Moon R anime was airing on TV, but considering the lead time necessary to develop a game like this, it seems to have been based entirely on the Classic season of the anime. So without further ado, let’s take a look and see what Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon has to offer!

Almost as soon as Sailor Moon was released in Japan, it had a fully-charged marketing machine right behind it ready to put the story of these sailor-suited magical girls into every product imaginable. From finger puppets to puzzles, paper plates to board games, Sailor Moon probably had a product of some sort to meet the needs (and price points!) of most kids. It really shouldn’t come as any surprise that Sailor Moon would get a game, though it is interesting that its first game would be for the Game Boy. Programmed by Angel (a subsidiary of Bandai), the Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon was released for Game Boy on December 18, 1992.1 It’s probably safe to say that the release date one week before Christmas isn’t a coincidence.